March 20, 2010 Update: A newer version of this content is now available! New labs, new sample app, new Visual Studio bits... click here.April 27, 2010 Update: The Beta 2 VHD is effectively expired now that the trial bits have stopped working, so I have struck out the text below. Please see the new version of the VHD referenced above.

Just in time for the holidays, we have posted a brand new virtual machine (VM) which is pre-configured with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2, and sample data that you can use to help learn the product, perform demonstrations, etc. This VM included everything you need to learn and demonstrate the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) capabilities of Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 (with the exception of Lab Management). This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC). Hyper-V is highly recommended because of the performance benefits and snapshotting capabilities.

We also have a preliminary set of 7 hands-on labs (which also double as demo scripts) that you can go through with this VM, with more in the works. Note that each lab/demo is designed to work in isolation from the other labs/demos, so be sure to have a rollback strategy in place (VPC undo disk / Hyper-V snapshots) prior to working on a lab/demo. To download these labs please visit http://cid-8c96cc4d0756cacb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/Blog%20Attachments/2010%20Beta%202%20Labs?uc=3 (you can click on “Download as ZIP file” to grab everything at once). These labs will be making their way into a refresh of the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit soon. The “Working with the Visual Studio 2010 Virtual Machine” document is a work in progress and will be updated in the coming days, but for now it should have everything you need to get started. Any questions, just ask… feedback on these labs/demos is welcome!

This image will effectively stop working on April 9, 2010 when the SQL Server Trial stops working. You will also receive Windows activation messages while using this VM – this is because of the way Windows Server 2008 trial behaves and is to be expected, so you can ignore / cancel these activation dialogs when prompted. If you want to get rid of these activation warnings you can activate the image using your own product key (e.g. from your MSDN Subscription). You may want to do the same for the copy of Office which is installed, and even update SQL Server to a full version if you are feeling bold.

I suggest using a download manager for these files since they are very large. My download manager of choice is Free Download Manager. You can use your own favorite download manager, but you may need to adapt the instructions below as appropriate.

###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) For VS2010 Beta 2 Hyper-V - Do Not Include This Line### http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0001.exehttp://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0002.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0003.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0004.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0005.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0006.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0007.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0008.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0009.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0010.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0011.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/8/2/182B723A-F68D-4114-B8AC-0A7426FB8936/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_hyperv.part0012.rar ###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###

###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) For VS2010 Beta 2 Windows [7] Virtual PC - Do Not Include This Line### http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0001.exehttp://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0002.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0003.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0004.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0005.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0006.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0007.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0008.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0009.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0010.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0011.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/6/21676903-AED4-487B-9C9A-C6D94F1A7E23/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_winvpc.part0012.rar ###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###

###Select This Section and Copy It (CTRL+C) For VS2010 Beta 2 Virtual PC 2007 SP1 - Do Not Include This Line### http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0001.exe http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0002.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0003.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0004.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0005.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0006.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0007.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0008.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0009.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0010.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0011.rar http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/2/6/026148BB-44EB-444F-BA8B-BFF39901A7CA/en_visual_studio_2010_beta2_december2009_vpc.part0012.rar ###End - Do Not Include This Row In Your Selection###

Launch the user interface for Free Download Manager (either from the Start Menu or via the system tray icon if FDM is already running).

Click File -> Import -> Import List of URLs from Clipboard.

When prompted for a download group, accept the default and click OK.

You are now free to minimize Free Download Manager while the files download. By default, they will be saved to c:\downloads. Note: It may take up to 24 hours from when this post is published for the files to become available in your region as they replicate across our CDN. You can easily select all files within Free Download Manager and select “Start Download” if they fail the first time.

The download details pages contain more information on each of these releases.

Download details pages:

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Hyper-V)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Windows [7] Virtual PC)

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (Virtual PC 2007 SP1)

Remember that you can install all of this software for yourself by downloading the installers from here.

Sorry Alan, you actually don't need that file - it was redundant to the part0001.exe and has been deleted. I had originally updated my blog post to exclude it but it looks like it somehow crept back into the list, sorry about that! You can safely ignore that file.

Brian

TJ

28 Jan 2010 7:13 AM

Has anyone gotten the HyperV to install/extract successfully? I've tried multiple times on two separate machines and every time I install, I get at least 3 or 4 'Packed data CRC failed in VS2010-Beta2.vhd' messages. And it's never consistent, a failed part might work when run again, and a part that failed before might run successfully the next time. I guess I'll try the VirtualPC download instead.

Yes lots of people have successfully grabbed the Hyper-V image. Are you using a download manager like Free Download Manager?

Brian

TJ

2 Feb 2010 10:12 AM

Got it working by changing versions of Free Download Manager. I had been using FDM Lite ver. 3.0 in all cases. Once I switched/upgraded to FDM ver. 3.0 build 848, the files brought down extracted cleanly first time. Thanks again!

ABF

17 Feb 2010 11:57 AM

Has anyone has downloaded the VPC 2007 version, I open it and WSS 3.0 is not working, the Project portal fails to depicts the report because WSS service is not available does anyone knows the solution?